


Ghosts

by grey_gazania



Series: This Girl Is Taking Bets [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 616/MCU mashup, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gen, Genderswap, genderswap aLL THE THINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:38:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8129032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey_gazania/pseuds/grey_gazania
Summary: She picks up the notebook in Halifax, but it isn’t until she’s in São Paulo that she really starts to write things down. It’s dangerous, she knows, taking notes where they could be read by others, but the inside of her own mind is too crowded, too noisy. She needs another place to store things.





	

She picks up the notebook in Halifax, but it isn't until she's in São Paulo that she really starts to write things down. It's dangerous, she knows, taking notes where they could be read by others, but the inside of her own mind is too crowded, too noisy. She needs another place to store things.

It's just information at first — base locations, operative names, possible leads. But as she travels, as the echoes and whispers in her head grow louder, what she writes begins to change.

_You had four sisters. You played tennis. Oxtail soup requires good cheesecloth. Sarah Rogers once pawned her wedding ring to pay for a doctor for Steve. There were sixteen steps leading up to your family's apartment door. Jackie Jefferson taught you to dance the Charleston. Tommy O'Brien taught you to fire a gun. Bobby Garcia taught you how to drive. You almost married Jack O'Hanrahan. You were drafted; the Smithsonian got that wrong. The first time you assassinated someone, you were still working for the SSR. Steve hated it. The man's name was… It was… His name…_

And the doors in her head crash open, letting in a swarm of howling ghosts.

The list begins that evening, with the name of that one long-dead man. _Simon Lange_ , she writes. _German spy, 1944. Samuel Klein — German spy, 1944. Dante Lombardo — Italian spy, 1944. Anton Gadbois — French Nazi collaborator, 1944. Seventeen HYDRA agents in Colmer. Two in Kutno. Eleven in Chelm._

It goes on, and on, and on. She writes until the pen runs dry, names where she can and, where she can't, as detailed descriptions as she can give. _Matthew Lynch, Charlie Benson, and William Briggs — UK soldiers, 1954. James Keller — NATO General, 1955. John F. Kennedy — US President, 1963. The girl in the green skirt and headband — Belfast or Derry, sometime in the 70s. The man in Bloemfontein who died from a "gas leak" — wife and three daughters — 1980s? The Thai politician — he was talking to a reporter — unknown date — check news archives._

Over the next seven months, she fills four notebooks, and when she settles into her small apartment in Bucharest, she slips them into the bag that she hides under the floorboards, right alongside the Colt .45, the water bottles, the rations and the spare underwear. Maybe it's strange, keeping a list of every person she's ever killed. She doesn't know; she's well aware that her parameters for 'strange' are far from normal, and it's not as though she can ask the neighbors what they think. But it's the only way she has to memorialize them. She's not at all certain that souls exist, but if they do, at least the dead can know that she's aware of her own guilt. That, for whatever it might be worth, she regrets their deaths.

When she's caught, when she's locked into that cage with electricity jolting through her, the notebooks are taken away and she nearly panics. Not because she's worried that they'll be read — frankly, she doesn't care — but because she isn't _finished_. She hasn't matched every face to a name yet, hasn't familiarized herself with every life she's taken.

Then the power flickers, and the man in front of her starts reading a string of words in Russian, and the notebooks don't matter anymore.

  


* * *

  


_After_ , when she's crammed in the back seat of the getaway car, her knees nearly hitting her chin, she sits in silence and lets the events play out through her head once more. She has thirteen new names to add to her list, and the thought makes her want to weep. _I don't do that anymore_ , she'd told Steve. She'd thought she was telling the truth, but she was wrong. She can't promise that to anyone, not when her own mind isn't hers to control.

When Steve offers his reassurances, they ring hollow. He's right; she wasn't in control. But it was still _her_ hands that fired the guns, _her_ hands that wielded the knives, _her_ hands that snapped necks and tightened garrote wires and tampered with gas lines. It's _her_ dreams that are haunted.

And it was _her_ hands that took the lives of Howard and Maria Stark, so when their son wraps his arm around her throat and demands the truth, she gives it to him.

_“I remember **all** of them.”_  
  
  



End file.
